Understanding form and meaning

1. Understanding form and meaning Dr Tan Wee Hoe

2. Lecture Outline • Form and meaning in design aesthetics • Which one comes first? Art or aesthetics? • Primitive accumulation • The pleasure in design (Four principles)

3. Form • The visible shape or configuration of something • Style, design and arrangement in an artistic work as distinct from its content. • A type or variety of something • An artistic or literary genre • A particular way in which a thing exists or appears • Philosophy the essential nature of a species or thing , especially (in Plato’s thought) regarded as an abstract ideal which real things imitate or participate in.

4. Plato – the idealist Platonic thinking

5. Meaning • What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action. • Mean: • Intend to convey or refer to (a particular thing)

6. Which one comes first? Art or aesthetics? • Ancient murals in caves: art comes first • Patterns on stoneware: aesthetics comes first • Primitive accumulation: • A form of fundamental accumulation, which mainly acquired through the process of production activities, i.e. the process of creating beauty.

7. Primitive accumulation • Patterns on stoneware are representation of physical animals, e.g. fish, bird, frog, etc, which evolved from realistic to abstract. • The earliest aesthetics was not the sensation of physical artwork, instead it was the mastery of routine of particular forms and the feelings towards the discipline of nature (Li, 2001). • In daily production activities, the cave man got familiar and mastered the discipline of nature and the routine of forms, thus establishing certain feelings on these matters.

8. Primitive accumulation • Examples of the routine of forms: • Rhythm, sequence, tempo, balance, interval, repetition , unity, change, etc. • To unify the external objective regularity and subjective intentionality, resulting the earliest forms of beauty and aesthetics sensation. • Although the forms belong to the nature, human beings took the initiative to master them and applied the mastery on material subjects—giving meanings to individual subjects.

9. The pleasure in design • Occurs when human beings achieve their aims by altering or changing subjective world. • i.e. achieving the unity by matching the regularity of nature with individual objectives. • Four general principles (suggested by Hekkert, 2006) • Maximum effect for minimum means • Unity in variety • Most advanced, yet acceptable • Congruence / appropriateness

10. Principle 1: Maximum effect for minimum means • Our systems want to function as economically as possible. • If we can smell, see, hear, or decide something faster or with less effort, we will prefer it over the more demanding alternative. • We like to invest a minimal amount of means, e.g. effort, resources, brain capacity, to attain the highest possible effect, in terms of survival, reproduction, learning or explaining. • A theory or formula is considered beautiful when it only has a few assumptions or parameters that can describe or predict a vast range of phenomena.

11. The use of metaphor • Metaphor has for long been seen as a stylistic device to say something that is difficult to express in words. For this reason, we often use metaphors to express our emotional feelings, as in “frozen with fear”. • Metaphors are used as an economical and efficient way of expression that is not restricted to language (e.g., Forceville, Hekkert, & Tan, 2005; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999). • Via a simple reference to something else (the source), we can map a wealth of meaning and a novel perspective onto the target.

12. Metaphor • A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. • A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else. • Origin: • late 15th century: from French métaphore, via Latin from Greek metaphora, from metapherein 'to transfer’

13. Principle 2: Unity in variety • The world out there is loaded with information and we can simply not pick up any source that happens to be within reach. • It is therefore beneficial to perceive connections and make relationships; to see what belongs together and what not. • In sum, in order to perform these tasks, our sensory systems must detect order in chaos or unity in variety.

14. Rationale behind unity Evolutionary advantage: • The perceptual tendency of grouping, of discovering relations, is reinforcing because it allows us to detect objects or meaningful wholes, e.g. the tiger that is partly hidden behind the tree. Neurophysiological advantage • Due to the limitations of our brain’s capacity, extracting relationships is an economically sound way to minimize allocation of attentional resources.

15. Gestalt laws of perceptual organisation • “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” • Opposition to structuralism • Discovery reading: • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

16. Principle 3: Most advanced, yet acceptable (MAYA) • Examining the incompatibility of two theories: • The preference-for-prototypes theory (Whitfield & Slatter, 1979) • The attractiveness of novelty (Martindale, 1990)

17. The preference-for-prototypes theory • We prefer the most typical examples of a category, the ones that are often also very familiar and we have been exposed to repeatedly. • Such a preference for familiar things is adaptive since it will lead to safe choices instead of risking the unknown.

18. The attractiveness of novelty • People have always been attracted by new, unfamiliar, and original things, partly to overcome boredom and saturation effects (Martindale, 1990). • The preference for novel instances is also an adaptive trait, especially for children, in that novelty facilitates learning.

19. MAYA • Aims to increase the novelty of a design while preserving its typicality. • We tend to prefer products with an optimal combination of both aspects . • Examples: • Mobile phones, computers, etc. • the popularity of remixes of old songs

20. Principle 4: Congruence / appropriateness • The relationship between various sensory impressions—multi-modality. • Since ease of identification has survival value, we tend to prefer products that convey similar messages to all our senses. • Consistency of impressions will lead to elevated identification accuracy (Zellner, Bartoli, & Eckard, 1991). • E.g. the levels of the smell and taste components in foods must mach for an optimal pleasantness (Schifferstein & Verlegh, 1996).

21. Congruence • The aspects of product that stimulate the various senses could be congruent on the theme or association conveyed and the level of (individual) affect they produce. • Whereas attaching a particular theme or association to a sensory aspect is a non-aesthetic attribution process, assessing whether these labels are congruent is regarded an aesthetic event. • It is pleasing to the mind to see that the themes match, it is displeasing when it finds out the labels are incongruent.

22. Form follows function • Congruency not only holds for the internal consistency of the various sensory impressions, each also has to be appropriate for the particular product. • E.g. ‘sound/touch/smell follows function’. • The function is not restricted to a utilitarian one; the function of a product can very well be experiential, e.g. to enjoy, to enrich, to inspire, to increase one’s identity, etc. • Such experiences are nowadays more decisive in people’s buying behaviour than the primary or utilitarian function. • Making all the sensory messages congruent with the intended, overall experience is therefore an important task for designers.

23. Analogy • A comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification: • A thing which is comparable to something else in significant respects. • E.g. works of art were seen as an analogy for works of nature.

24. Symbiotic • Interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both. • A mutually beneficial relationship between two different people or groups. • Origin: • late 19th century: modern Latin, from Greek sumbiōsis 'a living together', from sumbioun 'live together', from sumbios 'companion'

25. Semiotic • Semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. • Origin: • late 19th century: from Greek sēmeiotikos 'of signs', from sēmeioun 'interpret as a sign'

26. Imitation • The action of using someone or something as a model: • An act of imitating a person’s speech or mannerisms, especially for comic effect. • A thing intended to simulate or copy something else. • Proverb • Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. • Origin: • late Middle English: from Latin imitatio(n-), from the verb imitari.

27. Reflexion time (10 minutes) • How would you relate the principles of pleasure in design to your term paper writing? • Write down your reflexion

28. References • Forceville, C., Hekkert, P. & Tan, E. (2005). The adaptive value of metaphors. In U. Klein, K. Mellman, and S. Metzger (Eds.), Anthropology and social history: Heuristics in the study of literature. • Hekkert, P. (2006). Design Aesthetics: Principles of Pleasure in Design. Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers. [URL: www.pabst-publishers.de/psychology-science/2.../06_Hekkert.pdf] • Li, Z. (2001). Four Lectures on Aesthetics. Tianjin: Tinjin Academy of Social Sciences. • Martindale, C. (1990). The clockwork muse: The predictability of artistic change. New York: Basic Books. • Ramachandran, V.S., & Hirstein, W. (1999). The science of art: A neurological theory of aesthetic experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 15-51. • Schifferstein, H.N.J., & Verlegh, P.W.J. (1996). The role of congruency and pleasantness in odor-induced taste enhancement. ActaPsychologica, 94, 87-105. • Whitfield, T. W. A., & Slatter, P. E. (1979). The effects of categorization and prototypicality on aesthetic choice in a furniture selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 70, 65-75. • Zellner, D.A., Bartoli, A.M., & Eckard, R. (1991). Influence of color on odor identification and liking ratings. American Journal of Psychology, 104, 547-561.